Distant Fires deals with black and white issues derived from sharply drawn characters, not polemic. Danger and hopelessness hang over the construction crew -- five men at work atop a ten-story building in Ocean City, Maryland, in the heat of the summer. On a marvel of a set, the actors speak their lines, quite eloquently, while actually pouring and spreading cement, actually recreating the duties of laborers. Three of the workers are black. Ray Aranha plays the oldest, affable, smiling Raymond, whose language is almost completely made up of expletive and sexual references. Russell Andrews is the hard-working, optimistic Thomas, crew chief for the day. He believes that if he does his job very well, he will be rewarded and recognized.
Gordon T. Skinner is Foos, the slacker, a part he polishes to a surprising shine. Much to Thomas' disgust and Raymond's chagrin, Foos drinks and sleeps on the job and is a follower of Harris, who has incited riots in a section called Cambridge. Played with a naive reality by Brian Toohey, Angel is the young, white college kid who got his job through his dad's connections with the boss. With bravado, John Elsen plays Beauty, also white and a muscle-bound dumb guy. Exhilarated by passing the union test to be a bricklayer, Thomas is puzzled when Beauty turns out to have the same chance for a promotion. Despite the poor work Beauty admits doing, General, the white boss, played with calculated amounts of hesitation and obfuscation by the masterful Joseph Rose, offers Beauty the job. Again the tension rises on this well-wrought, well-produced and well-directed drama.
